Red Bank Wawa: Ideal location or traffic nightmare?

One of the area's busiest intersections is the proposed site of a new Wawa in Red Bank.
Shannon Mullen

The intersection of Newman Springs Road, Maple Avenue, Broad Street and Route 35 is a key gateway in and out of downtown Red Bank, and a headache for commuters.

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Traffic backs up on Newman Springs Road in Red Bank during the evening rush hour. A developer wants to build a Wawa store and fuel station at the current site of a used car dealership.(Photo11: Shannon Mullen)Buy Photo

Story Highlights

Auto Exotica, which is currently at the site, plans to relocate to a new showroom in Middletown.

A new QuickChek convenience store and fuel station is coming to Shrewsbury, about a mile from the proposed Wawa.

RED BANK - A proposal to build a Wawa convenience store and gas station on Newman Springs Road would mean big changes for one of Monmouth County's most congested intersections.

Whether it would be a boon or a detriment to the area is a matter of heated debate.

The 1.7-acre property, currently occupied by the Auto Exotica used car dealership, sits at the eastern terminus of Newman Springs Road at one of the main gateways in and out of the borough's downtown shopping and entertainment district.

It's there that Newman Springs, Broad Street, Maple Avenue and Route 35 come together in a complicated nexus of traffic signals and moving vehicles, with a jughandle and a gated New Jersey Transit railroad crossing thrown in for good measure. Throughout the day, motorists frequently endure a long wait to get to the front of the line only to have the railroad gate come down when the light turns green.

The intersection is also a critical thoroughfare for shoppers coming to and from The Grove and other nearby shopping centers in Shrewsbury, as well as for Garden State Parkway commuters living in communities to the east of Route 35, including Rumson, Fair Haven, Little Silver and Sea Bright. You can see what traffic looks like in the area during the evening rush hour in the video above.

All that traffic is what makes the site so attractive to the developer, A&B Property Holdings, LLC. The company, owned by the owner of the Auto Exotica dealership, Frank Sala of Middletown, has an application pending before the Zoning Board of Adjustment to build a 5,585-square-foot convenience store and a canopied fueling station with 12 fueling positions. The store would have 51 parking spaces, well above what the zoning requires.

Sala told the Asbury Park Press he plans to relocate the Red Bank dealership to an existing lot he operates at 981 Highway 36 in Middletown. He plans to replace that lot with a new 125-vehicle indoor showroom that he said will be the largest of its kind in Monmouth and Ocean counties. A&B Property Holdings would lease the Red Bank property to Wawa.

Sala said he didn't plan on relocating but Wawa made him an attractive offer.

"I had QuickChek and Wawa soliciting me for nearly a year," Sala said.

The Wawa proposal requires a use variance because convenience stores with fuel stations are not permitted in that area.

"I think this is the perfect site for this (Wawa)," John Rea, the applicant's traffic consultant, said at the second session of the board's public hearing on the proposal March 1.

"It will (allow) people who are on the road already to make an easy in-and-out to get the items they need."

Minor or major impact?

That's not how critics of the plan see it, however.

They think adding a busy Wawa to the mix will only make a dire traffic problem even worse. As it stands now, the intersection already gets an "F" rating from the New Jersey Department of Transportation, the lowest possible, because of how long it takes vehicles to get through the traffic light.

At the board's meeting, Rea came under sharp questioning by attorneys Edward J. McKenna Jr., a former Red Bank mayor representing the operators of a nearby Exxon gas station, and Michael J. Convery, representing Christopher Cole, the managing partner of the company that owns The Grove shopping centers in Shrewsbury and another upscale strip mall with a Platypus home furnishings store and a Megacycle dealership a tenth of a mile west of the proposed Wawa site on Newman Springs Road.

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John Rea, a traffic engineer for a developer that wants to build a Wawa store and gas station on Newman Springs Road in Red Bank, answers questions at the Red Bank Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting on March 1, 2018.(Photo11: Shannon Mullen)

Rea testified that the Wawa will generate up to 500 trips during the morning peak hour. But he said 75 percent of those customers would be motorists that are already passing the property headed for another destination. Those customers would pull in and pull out without diverting their route.

Another 15 percent would also already be on the roads bound for another destination but would need to alter their route to get to the Wawa, he estimated.

That leaves just 10 percent of customers — or about 50 vehicles during the morning peak — who would have the Wawa as their primary destination, according to Rea's estimates. He said that additional traffic would add just one vehicle to the queue of vehicles waiting for each traffic light cycle during peak morning and evening hours.

"I quite frankly don't think most people would notice that impact," Rea said.

Trip statistics questioned

McKenna and Convery, however, said Rea was relying too heavily on data provided by the ITE Trip Generation Manual, the standard reference for traffic studies. They said the data don't factor in the added drawing power of brand recognition and lower fuel prices offered at a business like Wawa.

In November, the zoning board in neighboring Shrewsbury approved the construction of a 5,500-square-foot QuickChek convenience store with a 10-vehicle fuel station a mile away from the proposed Wawa location, at Apple Street and Shrewsbury Avenue, south of Newman Springs Road.

The attorneys also zeroed in on the Wawa's impact on several side streets off Newman Springs Road, including Henry Street, Laurel Street and Dr. James Parker Boulevard. Under the developer's plan, motorists won't be allowed to make a left turn exiting the Wawa onto eastbound Newman Springs Road, meaning they will have to turn right onto westbound Newman Springs Road and then use side streets to work their way back to Broad Street or Route 35.

Rea, however, insisted the impact on those streets would be "minimal."

Another issue is the Wawa's impact on vehicles using the two-way center turning lane that divides that end of Newman Springs Road. You can see what the backup on the center turning lane looks like and take a ride along the shoulder yourself in the street view of the intersection below.

During the evening rush hour, vehicles heading east toward the intersection queue up in that lane for several blocks waiting to make a left turn at the traffic light onto Broad Street, while vehicles headed for Route 35 South typically ride illegally along the shoulder to get around the backup at the light until they reach a dedicated right turn lane closer to the intersection.

Rea said plans call for improving the striping of the center turning lane and making the highly trafficked right shoulder into a legal lane.